Now he and Lopez were at the Progress together, and they were almost the only men in the club. Lopez was quite contented with his own present sojourn in London. He had not only been at Gatherum Castle but was going there again. And then he had brilliant hopes before him,—so brilliant that they began, he thought, to assume the shape of certainties. He had corresponded with the Duchess, and he had gathered from her somewhat dubious words that the Duke would probably accede to her wishes in the matter of Silverbridge. The vacancy had not yet been declared. Mr. Grey was deterred, no doubt by certain high State purposes, from applying for the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, and thereby releasing himself from his seat in Parliament, and enabling himself to perform, with a clear conscience, duties in a distant part of the world which he did not feel to be compatible with that seat. The seekers after seats were, no doubt, already on the track; but the Duchess had thought that as far as the Duke's good word went, it might possibly be given in favour of Mr. Lopez. The happy aspirant had taken this to be almost as good as a promise. There were also certain pecuniary speculations on foot, which could not be kept quite quiet even in September, as to which he did not like to trust entirely to the unaided energy of Mr. Sextus Parker, or to the boasted alliance of Mr. Mills Happerton. Sextus Parker's whole heart and soul were now in the matter, but Mr. Mills Happerton, an undoubted partner in Hunky and Sons, had blown a little coldly on the affair. But in spite of this Ferdinand Lopez was happy. Was it probable that Mr. Wharton should continue his opposition to a marriage which would make his daughter the wife of a member of Parliament and of a special friend of the Duchess of Omnium?
He had said a word about his own prospects in reference to the marriage, but Everett had been at first too full of his own affairs to attend much to a matter which was comparatively so trifling. "Upon my word," he said, "I am beginning to feel angry with the governor, which is a kind of thing I don't like at all."
"I can understand that when he's angry with you, you shouldn't like it."
"I don't mind that half so much. He'll come round. However unjust he may be now, at the moment, he's the last man in the world to do an injustice in his will. I have thorough confidence in him. But I find myself driven into hostility to him by a conviction that he won't let me take any real step in life, till my life has been half frittered away."
"You're thinking of Parliament."
"Of course I am. I don't say you ain't an Englishman, but you are not quite enough of an Englishman to understand what Parliament is to us."
"I hope to be,—some of these days," said Lopez.
"Perhaps you may. I won't say but what you may get yourself educated to it when you've been married a dozen years to an English wife, and have half-a-dozen English children of your own. But, in the meantime, look at my position. I am twenty-eight years old."
"I am four years your senior."
"It does not matter a straw to you," continued Everett. "But a few years are everything with me. I have a right to suppose that I may be able to represent the county,—say in twenty years. I shall probably then be the head of the family and a rich man. Consider what a parliamentary education would be to me! And then it is just the life for which I have laid myself out, and in which I could make myself useful. You don't sympathise with me, but you might understand me."